Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
AN UNUSUAL ESCAPE
Are you likening yourself to Zeus? Darcy tried to laugh at himself to quell the rioting anger within him.
Of course, this young lady with him had no notion of the ‘family matters’ he had mentioned.
She had no idea he had lately seen his own dear sister, as sweet and innocent as Persephone, seduced by the villainy of a man who was not unlike Hades, a man who was once like a brother to him.
But to blame Georgiana for that? To think Georgiana wanted to be seduced?
Unthinkable, untenable nonsense. Georgiana was little more than a child!
But Miss L could not know that, obviously.
Nor could she know that it was he who was regarded as the villain in that bit of Darcy tragedy.
He who had failed his dear sister and who was, as his uncle had said, unfit for guardianship of a young lady.
His chest tightened as he remembered the indignity of that, the coldness in his uncle’s eyes as he informed his nephew that Georgiana would live with them for the time being.
The worst of it was that he could not disagree with them. I am the villain.
Miss L had also risen from the sofa and, taking possession of the lamp, had gone to the window where she stood faintly illuminated. In an effort to lure his thoughts from the dark paths they generally trod, he forced himself to behold her, to study her with the eye of a connoisseur.
The pale fingerlings of light caressed her dark curls, and for a brief, mad moment he imagined releasing those curls from the confines of their pins and allowing them to tumble over the lady’s fine, light figure. Miss L is beautiful.
He had not thought so immediately, for he did recollect seeing her, and dismissing her, in the assembly room.
She had been off to the side speaking with a small knot of young women, and he had only noticed her insofar as to observe that her gown was much more elegant, more fashionable, than those of the country populace.
But here, in this room, debating with him and challenging him, wit and good humour shining in her eyes, here she was beautiful.
And he found himself feeling enchanted by her, the liveliness and vivacity with which she spoke. There was no lady like her that he had ever known, and he longed to make her argue with him again.
Could there be anything stupider, he mused, than to come to this undistinguished backwater of a town and grow fascinated by a country bumpkin?
Save for the fact that, clearly, she was not a bumpkin.
By the mode of her dress, she appeared to be a lady of the Quality, perhaps someone who had not come out yet?
She did not seem so very young, but if she had an elder, unmarried sister…
Or possibly she had been away from town for a time, travelling or something of the like.
He had just resolved himself to ask her about travel and town when she turned from the window. “I think I know how we can do it.”
“Do…what?” He rose and slowly crossed the short distance between them to join her at the window.
“Escape this room,” she replied. “I imagine that if you are strong enough to hold the reins of a spirited horse, then likely you are strong enough to lower me down? Just a bit closer to the ground, to lessen the distance of the jump.”
“Out the window?” He laughed. “I am not dropping you out of the window, if that is what you suggest.”
She placed one hand on her hip. “Do you have a better idea?”
He thought a moment but realised, in fact, he did not. “In any case, with what might I lower you? We have no rope, nothing even to fashion—”
“My petticoat,” she said. “I believe if we doubled my stockings and tied them to my petticoat—”
“Absolutely not.” He shook his head firmly. “First, what if they did not hold you?”
“Are you calling me stout?” She gave him a pert frown.
“Of course not. But you are a grown woman and—”
“And I have done similar things before, in younger years when I was not so much smaller than I am now. It will work, I assure you.”
“If you remove your petticoat, your gown will be…” He gestured helplessly towards her skirts. The gown was pale silk, ivory or perhaps lightest pink, and without her petticoat beneath it… He determinedly wrenched his mind away from the tempting idea that presented. “It would be scandalous.”
“A little,” she admitted. “But I trust I can overcome my modesty for a short time and that you can keep your eyes averted. What choice have we? It cannot have escaped your notice that no one, not a soul, has come by this room in all the time we have been within?”
In fact, that had not escaped his notice. He had heard no footsteps, no voices, however distant.
“If we spend the night here, then whosoever finds us in the morning will be the arbiter of our fates. What I propose might be more shameful, but I trust it will remain between us.”
“I cannot allow you to be the one to go down. What if you were to break your leg?”
“If you lower me gently enough, my legs will survive the journey intact. In any case, there is no other possibility. For as much confidence as I have in my legs, I assure you my arms are nowhere near equal to the task of lowering you towards the ground.”
“An excellent point,” he conceded. “Very well, then.”
“Go back over there.” She gestured towards the fireplace.
“Oh. You…you want to do this now?” He sounded stupid to even his own ears. A peculiar reluctance plagued him. He did not wish to see her go, odd as that seemed.
“No time like the present,” she replied cheerfully.
“So you will go down there and then—”
“Then I shall tell a maid that a gentleman has gone missing and that we suspect he is in the unused room. She will come up and find the key on the floor and let you out.”
“But you will not have your stockings and petticoat.”
“You must throw them down after me,” she explained patiently. “I will re-attire myself before I see anyone.”
“Very well.” His eyes traced the lines of her face, committing it to his memory such as he could in the dim light.
Then he turned and went to the mantel, keeping his back to her, refusing even to permit his mind to envision her delicate hands removing the stockings from her undoubtedly shapely legs.
He drew a deep breath, concentrating on the mantelpiece before him, a rough-hewn slab of limestone, pitted and worn in various places.
He catalogued those imperfections diligently until he heard her speak.
“I am ready.”
He turned, observing as she knotted her stockings on either side of the petticoat, doubling them to create a sort of handle.
He commented on her knots and she laughed, saying she had a cousin who had wished to join the navy but his mother would not permit it.
He helped her ensure they were sufficiently tight.
She crossed the room to the window, and he took up the lamp and followed, taking care not to illuminate that which he very much wanted to see. He pushed up the window for her, opening it as wide as he could.
“See that ledge?” She pointed down towards it and he squinted.
“Hardly a ledge. More like a slightly jutting stone.”
“Nevertheless, I intend to stand on it and then from there, you lower me down by my petticoat. Yes?” Her eyes were earnest and bright, searching his countenance.
“I wish there was some other way,” he blurted.
“There is,” she said with a smile. “But we have already established it will come with consequences that neither of us would like. This way, so long as we never admit to having known one another, all is safe.”
He nodded, then extended his hand towards her. A fraction of a second later, she placed her hand in his; it felt delicate and insubstantial within his grasp. What if it failed her? What if he failed her and she plunged to the ground below, breaking her neck and…?
He swallowed hard. What was it about him that it seemed he was forever placing young ladies in danger?
“It has been my pleasure, sir,” she teased, interrupting his anxious musings.
Again, he searched her countenance as he bowed slightly over her hand. “Until we meet again, Miss L.”
“Until we meet properly, Mr D,” she said while bobbing a quick curtsey.
Without a syllable more, she climbed out the window, twisting herself to face the building, her gloved hands gripping the casement.
She had already wrapped her end of the petticoat around one of her wrists, and he quickly followed suit, placing his toes up against the inside of the wall to brace for her descent.
She lowered herself gently, arriving on the small ledge without incident.
He had only a second to marvel at her strength before he was called upon to help.
He did the best he could, but his arms were hardly long enough to do much more than give her a few extra feet before she had to jump down.
She landed very roughly, or so it seemed to him, but quickly rose to her feet, dusting off herself and her gown before looking back up at where he leant from the window.
“Throw them down!” she called softly.
For a moment, he longed to take a stocking, some memento of this time which he already knew would grow magical in the remembering. But no; that would defeat the object of all of this.
The petticoat and stockings floated ethereally to the ground, and Miss L quickly grabbed them, slipping into the shadows cast by the building to, presumably, don them again.
He moved from the window, feeling an unexpected pang of loss.
His fate was in her hands now, but no matter how it happened, they would not know one another, would pretend none of this ever happened.
“Fare thee well, Miss L,” he said softly. “I do hope we might meet some day under more ordinary circumstances.”